Exercise is supposed to be good for you. But for
some people, exercise can become a deadly
obsession.

My guest in this podcast episode is Vanessa Alford, author of the
new book "Fit, Not Healthy", which is
a warning to all high achievers driven to extremes to
excel.

As a young girl growing up in Melbourne, Australia, Alford loved
sports: she began gymnastics at age six, netball at seven, and
tennis at age ten. She was, in her words, "born to
compete", and both her gymnastics and netball teams won the state
championships in her age group. During her early years of
sports, she ran to train and to keep fit, but describes it
as an obligation, not a pleasure.

After graduating college, Alford began to run regularly:
she would set the alarm for 6am, jog for 8k (around an
hour) along the beach and be home by 7am, which gave her time
to eat breakfast before cycling 15k to work. But soon, her
8k runs became 10k runs, and 12k runs on the
weekends.

Soon, both the runs and the ride became mandatory morning
rituals, "just like a shot of coffee or booze", that left her
euphoric, floating for the rest of the day on dopamine and
adrenaline. "This feeling of elation would sweep over me," she
says, "I just couldn't get enough of it."

Within months, she had dropped over 10 pounds and a dress
size, and then she started running marathons. Nike and
PowerBar sponsored her. Her runs became longer and more
grueling, and were soon accompanied by a strict dietary
protocol in which she counted every calorie, and
monitored every morsel that entered her mouth.

Soon she was running up to 160k a week while surviving on a
diet low in fat and low in carbohydrates too. Her body began
wasting away, slowly cannibalizing itself, and shutting down
non-essential physiological systems. She was exercising herself to
death. People warned her, they told her to stop, and her boyfriend
told her she had lost her mind. But she couldn't stop.

Then finally, Vanessa's body stopped for her, as she
collapsed in the middle of a race after losing sensation in
her legs.

In today's podcast interview, you're going to find out
exactly what happened, how exercise addiction occurs, how you
can recover from adrenal fatigue, how you can test your body to see
if you're exercising too much, and much more,
including:

-The difference between exercise addiction and a runner's
high...

-What's going on psychologically that makes some people feel
like they need to go do things like triathlons, marathons or
adventure races...

-Why you often need more and more exercise to achieve the same
"high"...

-What happens chemically that is making you feel so down, so
lazy, or so depressed if you stop exercising at the same volume or
frequency that you were at before...

-Why will rats run until they drop dead on an exercise
wheel...

-And much more!

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About the Podcast

Free fitness, nutrition, biohacking, fat loss, anti-aging and cutting-edge health advice from BenGreenfieldFitness.com! Tune in to the latest research, interviews with exercise, diet and medical professionals, and an entertaining mash-up of ancestral wisdom and modern science, along with Q&A's and mind-body-spirit optimizing content from America's top personal trainer.